


Back Again - A short sad Hobbit fanfic to relieve pent-up feels

by Exdasho



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-29
Updated: 2013-11-29
Packaged: 2018-01-02 23:59:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1063246
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Exdasho/pseuds/Exdasho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Canon character death; a little bittersweet, but hopefully the ending fixes it. This can be Bagginshield if you want it to be. I'M JUST REALLY SAD ABOUT THIS DRATTED STORY OKAY AND MY SOLUTION IS TO MAKE MYSELF EVEN SADDER BY WRITING SAD FIC. ENJOY.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Back Again - A short sad Hobbit fanfic to relieve pent-up feels

There's a line of dust upon the threshold of his hobbit-hole, now broken by a single footprint as Bilbo steps back into his home once again. Sore feet trail mud and dirt onto the carpet as the door slowly swings shut behind him. As he wearily lets his belongings, a small wooden chest filled with a peculiar weight among them, thump to the ground, more dust flies up in a plume and swirls lazily through the weakening sunlight still filtering in through his windows. For a moment he stands still, ears pricked in the muffled silence and hands at his side, warily scanning the familiar halls and doors-for what?-until the steady ticking of the old grandfather's clock down the hall emerges from the stale air and cuts through his sudden trepidation. Bilbo lets out the breath he'd been holding; "Silly old hobbit," he thinks to himself. "You're back home again at last." 

He turns back around to lock the door behind him, mind already starting to fill with thoughts of a warm bath, proper clothing, a filling supper, and perhaps quite a bit of dusting. The latch clicks into place, and as he makes to move away Bilbo's gaze falls unbidden onto the old glory-box sitting right by the door. He doesn't understand, for one sickening second, what he's staring at, nor why his heart both speeds up and seems to shatter all at once. There's a crude, vaguely foot-shaped smear of long-dried mud on the top edge of the box. He distinctly remembers that the dwarves had cleaned most of their mess up before leaving, on the morning he'd decided to join them on the journey that had taken him so far from home. Still not entirely comprehending, Bilbo's hand darts out to pick at it, and it crumbles beneath his fingers, small chunks tumbling onto the floor. All of a sudden a memory floods back to him; a ringing bell, a door swinging open, two bright smiles and two masses of tousled hair; one gold, one black. A pile of weapons dumped onto him and being roughly shoved aside, watching in horror as Kili rudely wipes the muddy underside of his boots on the edge of- Oh. Of course. 

There's a sudden frailness in his bones, a sudden exhaustion that seemed to only now catch up with him, and as Bilbo's knees give out beneath him he can feel his tired face crumple in long-delayed sorrow. The broken sobs now emerging from him don't sound like his own. He keeps one hand on the edge of the box, kneeling on the carpet as dust settles upon his quaking shoulders. With his back to the empty expanse of his hobbit-hole, Bilbo lets himself cry; and behind him he can hear the ghost of thirteen pairs of feet, thirteen raucous voices, and he lets himself believe that he can still feel the ground thump with the beat of a rowdy song. He squeezes his eyes shut, and the patter of his tears fades into something with a much more sombre tune sung with deep voices that resonate through his very bones, a song that he had once fallen asleep to in this very home a long, long time ago. And he tries, amidst it all, to block out the memories of three voices he knows he'll never hear again; the last of which he remembers saying "Farewell, burglar." at a frequency that would haunt him to the end of his days. 

Bilbo Baggins had come home. Yet throughout all the rest of his peculiarly long life, even through his adventures in raising Frodo, "disappearing" from the Shire, residing in Rivendell, witnessing the fall of the Ring, and his final travel into the Grey Havens, he'd never truly find home again until one day, lying on a bed with only the sounds of the sea for company, he'd close his eyes for the last time and feel a pair of calloused hands gripping his frail, wrinkled ones. He'd feel, more than hear, a deep laugh that sounds all too familiar, accompanied by two younger voices and a joyful cry of "Mister Boggins!" The deeper voice would say to him, "Welcome back, burglar." in a tone that was all but unfriendly, and Bilbo would smile and think to himself that, yes, he was quite ready for another adventure...and open his eyes once more. 


End file.
